Gov. Schwarzenegger thought he’d been able to stave off total economic collapse in California by putting state employees on furlough three times a month, but now the Alameda Superior Court found differently this week. From the Sacramento Bee:
In three rulings released late Thursday, Judge Frank Roesch said the governor’s reliance on the state’s Emergency Services Act to order three furlough days a month, triggering pays cuts of almost 15 percent, was flawed and illegal.
The judge was silent on the issue of back pay. Union lawyers said they’ll seek it.
Schwarzenegger turned to furloughs because the budget crisis required drastic action, a fact disregarded by the unions in refusing to accept paycuts. And any time the governor tries to cut a program from the budget, he could get sued. Of course, as the article indicates furloughs are a way of trimming wages. The problem is that Schwarzenegger, as governor, should be able to trim the workforce as he needs, but he cannot thanks to the chokehold on state finances held by the Service Employees International Union. A paycut for state workers would cause a reduction in member dues, meaning a paycut for union officials after all.
The takeaway: When confronted with a crisis, union officials would rather protect their own posh lifestyles and demand higher taxes than face economic reality. No wonder gubernatorial candidate and former congressman Tom Campbell has just endorsed the Citizen Power Initiative, which seeks to eliminate the use of public employee wage deductions to pay for political activities. The effort seeks to undermine the way in which unions have forced public employees to surrender a portion of their wages to the unions’ own political ends. Read more here.
